New York Attorney General Tish James, along with AG counterparts in 17 other states, have prevailed over Donald Trump’s capricious attempts to derail offshore wind energy projects all around the country by imposing a moratorium on approvals and even the issuance permits or leases for already-approved projects.

Having lost before a federal trial judge in Boston, the administration abandoned its own appeal, likely recognizing that it had no ability to actually defend this on the merits.

We’ve no doubt that the administration undertook these efforts not for any real specific economic or environmental or military reasons but simply as another plank in its obsession with owning the libs, which makes it worth pointing out that this antipathy towards renewable energy and wind in particular harms everyone — liberals, conservatives, MAGA, in red states and blue states, in cities and suburbs and rural areas.

Nobody is happier or safer or healthier for having higher prices at the pump, dirtier air, more reliance on volatile international energy imports or uncertain supply chains and the loss of thousands of jobs, among other things.

It’s a puerile drive to chest-bump and prop up a declining fossil fuel industry instead of embracing a better alternative that can itself deliver both huge job growth, not to mention energy independence and investment that can provide a competitive edge in an industry of the future.

Conservatives often claim to want to allow the market to dictate the technologies that win or lose, and in this case, the clear winner in the long term is renewables. Even the Gulf monarchies who’ve made their fortunes on oil and gas exports have come around to the idea that this is not a sustainable strategy, yet Trump won’t hear it.

This victory is important but by no means absolute. The administration has already managed to derail specific wind energy programs by directly paying companies settlements to not build already-planned wind farms. One such deal worth almost $1 billion, with French energy company TotalEnergies, is itself the focus of a lawsuit by James and other state attorneys general, who point out that the agreement is poised to deprive their states of expected power that could be used to keep spiraling energy costs down.

Separate groups are suing over the administration’s so-called national security reviews of wind projects, which absurdly purport that these projects are a national security risk rather than an imperative.

We trust that this lawsuit is successful, and that the energy companies that have been targeted by these policies move forward with their projects. Even if an anti-wind directive is no longer in place, we’re talking about investments in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that corporations are loath to make in a climate of uncertainty, where the federal government keeps trying to find new ways to stump these projects. Legal victories themselves have not prevented months of costly delays, unfortunately.

Still, hopefully a string of successes can convince companies and investors that the whims of the president alone cannot tamp down on an entire burgeoning industry, an embarrassing thing to have to convince people of in the United States. It will help that public support for these projects will only increase as the reality sets in that there’s no path to stabilizing energy prices without them.

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